Federal employees COLA slashed

[Belsnickel]

(02-14-2020, 09:06 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I'm not sure that I agree.  If you're going to adjust the worker's salary for inflation (I think the factor used is something like 3.92), then you must adjust the CEOs pay by the same factor.

When you do that, it actually softens the difference between the two, as CEOs pay in "adjusted for inflation" dollars would have been closer to $6.5M, rather than the $1.65M they actually earned in 1978.  And if you compare the "adjusted" number of ~$6.5M to today's $12.4M, that's not nearly as dramatic of an increase.

Yes, the disparity between CEOs and workers is great, but not as exponential as some are making it out.  Does something need to be done to bring up the workers?  Absolutely.  I'm just saying compare apples to apples when making the case.

We are not as different, as one would think at first glance.  You work in policy, coming from an accounting background.  You're used to dealing with exact amounts and absolute values.  Just as I work in Surveying, we deal in exact calculations and precise, exact boundary measurements.  When someone says that "you must consider inflation", I think to myself "how does having 5 acres of land in 1978 equate to having nearly 20 acres of land, today?".  Sure, the same piece of ground may be worth nearly 4X what it did in 1978, but he still only owns what he owns.  Value is relative to time that it is established, not retroactively.  (yes, I do understand the concept of inflation) 

My point is, I do agree that there is a wage disparity, and that something needs to be done.  I just don't feel it fair to use inflation values to make that point, as no one had ever even heard much about inflation, until around that time.  I was alive and aware, heck I remember the "fuel crisis" of a few years prior.

You should adjust all of it for inflation, and in fact the numbers you were responding to were adjusted.

https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/

Now, this is an actual researched article from a think tank, which isn't as easily digestible as some of the other links thrown around. You can look at the key points, though, but I think table 2 in the article is the most relevant to our conversation. But yeah, adjusted for inflation the difference is still stark and shows CEO pay has grown at a more exponential pace while worker pay has remained in a more logarithmic pattern.